TGDRT #33: Unity of Command

Jon and Dirk are joined by Tomislav Uzelac, designer of the amazing WW2 strategy game ‘Unity of Command’ and studio lead for 2×2 Games. They dig into the title’s superb AI, its innovative supply system, building a streamlined strategic experience and the challenges of running a game studio from Croatia.

Very excited to have the designer of my favorite strategy game of recent years on the podcast. And he didn’t disappoint.

Over many years I’ve managed to train myself to always step back and factor in what the end user experience will be when making a decision, but this skill just comes naturally to Tomislav. He’s probably the most pragmatic and focused designer I’ve ever met – and this clearly shows through with Unity of Command. Definitely someone whose work you’ll always want to keep an eye on.

2 Comments

I can imagine it would be difficult to test (grand) strategy games and know what will/won’t work until it’s fully designed and implemented, especially when it’s single player?

I remember a behind the scenes video with the Civ4 team, and Soren said they started testing it “immedietely” and often with multiplayer inplace of the AI. But I can imagine it being difficult to do that with a single player game, when you’d need a full AI system in order to test things?

Absolutely. Multiplayer is a lot of extra work, but it’s very handy for getting playtesting underway ASAP. My goal with AtG is to get the AI in a mostly-functional state fairly quickly, then flesh out its behavior over time. Still, it’s not a perfect solution and as such we’ll probably need a longer development period post-alpha than would be the case for a MP game.